Linguistic Sorting - Frequently Asked Questions (Doc ID 227335.1)

Last updated on MAY 14, 2024

Applies to:

Oracle Database - Standard Edition - Version 8.1.7.4 and later
Oracle Database - Enterprise Edition - Version 8.1.7.4 and later
Gen 1 Exadata Cloud at Customer (Oracle Exadata Database Cloud Machine) - Version N/A and later
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure - Database Service - Version N/A and later
Oracle Database Cloud Exadata Service - Version N/A and later
Information in this document applies to any platform.

Purpose

To provide an entry point for using Linguistic sorting and answer often asked questions.

Scope

Any DBA or developer who's looking into Linguistic sorting.

Details

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In this Document

1. Why is a sort order different on one client than on another / my init.ora settings are not used?

2. Why are strings like a-a ab- and a-c so strange sorted or "punctuation" characters ( /.;,-_ etc) sometimes ignored ?

3. What SQL operations are influenced by NLS_SORT and NLS_COMP?

4. Are indexes used with NLS_SORT set to anything else than BINARY?

5. Why do Accent- and Case Insensitive (_AI and _CI) SORTs not appear in V$NLS_VALID_VALUES?

6. SLOVAK and XSLOVAK sorting is not correct in 8i and 9i

7. Are there Asian Linguistic Sorts available?

8. Upper and lower function don't work as expected in Turkish for i and I characters.

9. Why is a Case Insensitive sort not working on a (N)CLob?

10. Can I (and should I) set Lingustic sorting on database/instance level ?

11. Known problems using NLS_COMP=LINGUISTIC or NLS_SORT to other than BINARY.

12. Known problems when using function (linguistic) based indexes (FBI).

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